Posts tagged GNoI

Happy May Day To All!

GTAIV is still taking much of the limelight for news coverage in the industry buzz-bins, and not without good reason as it is being heralded not only as a major commercial success-milestone, but also as one for cultural controversy and even media artistry… no matter which way you feel on any of the fences provided, there’s no doubt that this is a big deal. But just the same, there are other things to cover, as the gaming industry is an often shifting and morphous being at best, when GTAIV hype dies as it will eventually, other titles and take-overs will be filling the news and buzz space. See if you can figure out which ones are already getting in place for that eventuality here in today’s edition of GNoI:

In a move that may mean nothing at all, Blizzard has acquired webspace, Diablo3 dot com. So now the combined horror of the WoW cultists and the already strong Diablo cultists can begin rejoicing and making more masterplans for ways to never leave their computers… poop sock anyone?
DIABLO3dotcom

According to Activision’s CEO, the current US economy to directly contribute to a price drop in consoles – this is good, because I’m broke, and I still want a 360… come on US bad economy do something useful for once!
Activision-Console Price Drop

Infogrames has now outright and completely purchased Atari for $11mUSD, which is a slight update to previous reports of simple investing, which is, just not a company that I thought anyone would want to spend that sort of money on. It’s sorta’ like:
Taking the ugliest girl home, 4:30 in the morning and drunk off your arse

The mighty personally established herald of geekdom, Will Wheaton, is weighing in on the GTAIV controversy
Will Wheaton’s Geeky GTAIV Wisdom Sauce

The very strong possibility of being disbarred (with the official announcement scheduled for my birthday!) has obviously not been particularly kind to Jack-y-boy Thompson. Yet with a new pic to display the effects of stress on everyone’s fave ambulance chaser, it seems that he will likely be going after GTAIV very soon… Is it just me or does he look a bit lit?
Click only if you have a strong stomach

Kotaku is running an opine piece on the 7 commandments of vid-game design – good stuff as usual and an excellent find from the folks at Kotaku, although I think it has also appeared on the Gama[sutra] and others as well
Kotaku’s 7 Commandments

In honor of GTAIV, GoogleMaps has added a new interactive Liberty City map, because… someone somewhere needed it?
Google Maps Liberty City

In a first for the series, GTAIV has incorporated real life branding with particular companies along side the host of fake ones – specifically clothing and fashion companies
More useless GTAIV stuffs

According to Nolan Bushnell, not only does he not like in-game adverts, he doesn’t think that they work, literally, that’s what he said. For true.
Nolan No Like-y

According to Gawker, GTAIV is the first post-mod-vid-game in no small part due to the multi-media blitz and realization of the title.
GTAIV Post-Modern Vid-Game Art For The Masses

Here it is, your daily does of zen, featuring etchasketch, GTAIV, Michael Bay, Uwe Boll, Dr. Zoidberg, brain implants, Deathrace 2000, and a pocket creature… begin zen upload now:

The etch-a-sketchist has released a new piece, of course, in honor of GTAIVSKETCH

Finally, solid proof that actual (not sci-fi, we’re being serious, in that these are current and real) electronic brain implants actually have long lasting and direct effects on their hosts… now where’s the consumer level version for integrated media???
Brain Power – Bring On the BTL’s!



Just like the Handy Pocket Creature – GNoI is happy to anticipate your needs!

–Aleister

VNV Nation – Genesis

As yesterday suddenly exploded into a small family emergency, there was no reported GNoI. Today, as things have calmed down to say a perriwinkle, or stage mauve level of alert, we are resuming the posting of GNoI. Since there was much missed yesterday, today’s report will be a bit longer. So on we go, to today’s industry news in your regulraly scheduled GNoI:

Law of the Game discusses the current EA vs Take2 entanglement and what the real legal issues are and could be.

With apparently little or no warning, several key-members of the RetroStudios staff have left the Austin based dev house… there are currently no updates on whether or not this will lead to the formation of a new studio, however, there are some *rumors* that this is in direct response to the way in which Nintendo has gone about asking employees to relocate.
Gamecock Media is promoting Hail to the Chimp during a pres-primary in Philadelphia. Gamecock Media is awesome, they’re funny and silly and occasionally they publish games too!
Minusworld is releasing a very funny (and highly satirical) activity and coloring book for GTAIV. Please remember, that this is obviously meant to be ironic with regards to actually ‘hocking violence to the kiddies’…

The actual link:
There’s a new documentary film for gamers, this time taking a look at the world, as in, real-world, lives of MMO players. The film is called, Second Skin. Let the new digital and celluloid record bare witness to the underground world of cyber-sexing and poop-socking!
Former Take2 exec/CEO, Ryan Brant is back in power once more, this time with a new start-up game company, known as GreenScreen Interactive.
Since the Chicago Trans-Authority banned the recent bus adverts after severe pressure from Fox News and Jack-y-boy Thompson, it seems almost as if Take2 is raising the stakes with the newly witnessed full building adverts in LA and NY for GTAIV.
Also of note, Jack-y-boy’s recent comments and erm, thoughts, if the term can be used on the Florida based bus-stop poster adverts for GTAIV as well, which very specifically included absolutely zero questionable material in both the visual and copy portions of the promotional material.
According to Ubisoft’s CEO, they are looking positively to a possible big-name merger in the very near future, and in the interim are on a large scale hiring spree, boosted by very positive sales of their products in 2007 to current. Ubisoft could see as many as 900 additional and newly hired staff members.

The gama has a very nice if not, as they put it themselves, highly-debatable opine piece on the top 20 underutilized licenses. The gama scores extra points for using the Watchmen in the banner itself to help sell the seriousness of the point.

Full version of the article:
According to McKinsey&Co (consulting) any company who is not looking to experiment and test the waters in VW’s is shooting themselves in the foot (I’m paraphrasing as they actually said, ‘[they are] ignoring them at their peril’). The term, ‘Duh!’ easily comes to mind in a snarky-internal-monologue sort of voice.
1Up is running a good feature on how dev’s and PR utilize popular forums to get a grass-roots gage of player reception and anticipation. It seems simple, and obvious, but not everyone realizes how this works apparently, hence the article (please see the ‘duh’ comment from above for this one as well).
Will Ferrell, seems to be looking to expand his current ‘funnyordie’ website with an actual game-slant/content and possible game focus, possibly known as ‘gameordie’(!?).

Today’s moment of zen must be relegated to SFW, and thusly, despite certain recent stories of both humorous and serious interest running the interwebz, about con’s and conduct therein, specifically, personal space and sexual, we won’t be discussing them or linking them here, even though they are in no way leud or crude, and actually have storng cultural significance… instead, here is Yahtzee and his (as always) humorous thoughts on games. Your Smash Bros. Brawl Zero Punctuation Moment of Zen, begins with a man in a hat and ends with a song. Zen!

Because brains, sense of humor and intelligent wit are the Smexiest things of all

–Aleister

The Adicts – Na Na Na

Welcome to the Monday edition of GNoI (Game News of Interest!) – the countdown continues for GTAIV, with the obviously far reaching entanglements for EA and Take2 as well as some not so surprising move-spurning from RealTime Worlds (who offer an MMO version of GTA/clone), this is a no doubt a big event, and one that is shaking up the industry as well as the very focus of decision making itself… lots going on, and only days left until the release of the title – so let’s look at the news, both GTAIV and nonGTAIV related – GNoI news feed is live:

Due to journalistic coverage (and the term is being used very loosely) by Fox news of GTAIV and current street violence in Chicago, the CTA bus adverts for GTAIV are being pulled. In fact, they’ve already been pulled, hooray for the ability of neo-con journalism to directly control our media… wait, what’d I just say?

Matt Damon’s mother is giving her two cents on what contributes to youth-tied violence in the media, basically, action figures (O_O!)… But apparently, violent, Spy-movies are considerably ok, because, well, you know they’re not real or something

RealTimeWorlds is looking to resecure their global rights from Korean co Webzen, for upcoming title, APB. This is more than a little unusual, but perhaps it shows that there might be something to the current rumors that ‘Western’ based companies are looking to directly cash-in to the online gaming craze and not simply leave their babies in control of publishers who may not have the cultural touchstones necessary to handle them… or just plain GTAIV cash-in-greed, you decide.

Take2 has officially responded to the newest offer from EA. The crux: it’s another rejection. Which is simply awesome, thank you Take2 for making a direct stand against another pushy-corp buy-out attempt.

Ubisoft is opening a new campus is Casablanca, you may happily begin your black-and-white-noir-film jokings in earnest.

The ESRB is working to educate parents by partnering their efforts with national PTA’s, honestly, I’m not entirely sure that this is a good thing, anytime we have to basically ‘force’ parents to educate themselves on some new topic what interests the kiddies, it throws up a lot of red flags to me, makes me think that perhaps our nation’s parents do not put in the amount of time and care that they should be for their spawn.

GamerDNA (formerly GuildCafe Entertainment) has secured $3mUSD in series A funding and has will be expanding their current market with the new resources, including the launching of their official website, the interesting thing about this company is that they seem to be trying a recent soc-net / game hybrind community idea that hasn’t quite been proven to work yet.

LindenLab has let on that they are closer to finding a replacement CEO for the house that made SecondLife, but even with a new CEO I doubt it will make their product suck any less.

Another perspective, according to a new article being passed around, via Kotaku and others, it seems that the core of good game design is fewer not more mechanics and choices. Interesting read for anyone who is *really* into MMOs and the like, or simply aspires to design games in general.

Kian Bashiri, creator of the extremely fun and oironically funny, YHTBTR mini-flash game complete with a Portal-esque ending theme is interviewed. Again, the game is pure gold, and worth the 5 min of your time it takes to complete it and get to the snazzy song!

And here it is, your daily dose of FDA approved zen intake, featuring PowerPoint cliches, and the awesome rejection of Uwe Boll. Zen intake begins now:

Blizzard has (very wisely) rejected Uwe Boll’s request to direct any upcoming WoW movie – more companies should follow this sound example of integrity.

Finally, someone takes a good scathing look at Powerpoint and its over-usage in industry presentations.

The weekend has ended…

–Aleister

18 Visions – Black and Bruised